#45 PUPPY - MISCHKA
“She’s a pup, that’s why. She’s small. She’s soft. She fits on the woman’s lap. Nicely. You are now a 28-pound miniature Goldendoodle. A big boy. However, she is a standard Labradoodle. She will be much bigger than you one day. So, you know, keep that in mind.”
Scooter was a bit taken back by being ever so slightly overlooked. He’s not accustomed to “overlooked.”
“Yeah, but . . .” said the expression in his eyes as he looked from me to a group of people admiring a pup.
“She’s 13-weeks old, Scooter. She’s darling.”
“Was I 13-weeks old once?”
“You were. In this very place. You were small. You were darling. Your coat was soft and silky. You had baby teeth.”
“Baby teeth?”
You were lifted to many laps. But, you know. You’re a teenage boy now. You are two-and-a-half years old! You’ve seen teenaged human boys, and how they behave. Put it together.
“Would it help if they were castrated?”
“Scooter!”
“Those silly sounds these people are making over Mischka; fawning, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s not fawning, Scooter. Experts in such things call it Parentese, infant-directed speech. With babies, people automatically lift their voices, they go all sing-songie. Well, you are hearing it. The woman holding baby Mischka didn’t earn her Ph.D by cooing but when a baby anything is propped in a person’s lap (unless they are heartless), they automatically, even without embarrassment, drop into what you are watching now.”
“Did they make those sounds when they held me?”
“They did. Babies bring it out of people. And this is good. Infant people, and even infant dogs, operate mostly from the brain’s right hemisphere, and you better believe those silly sounds you hear from people ignoring you are serious signals emanating from the right hemisphere of human brains. The baby, in this case fawned-over Mischka, hears those high-pitched, exaggerated messages, and long before any word means anything, she learns ‘you are safe, you are heard, we are connected.”
“And cats?”
“What?”
“Things without brains, like cats. Can they catch signals?”
“Scooter!”
SCOOTER SUBLIME says, “Huh?”
MISHKA - 13 weeks old
